Remember how the Mainstream Media said they won't be coming for Jefferson and Washington Next?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I remember my history class teaching me about how history is written by the winners.

Funny how that works. What will they feed us next?

All the more reason to look at the loser's side of the story to see what the winners swept under the rug, for the sake of their own historical narrative.

I guess? I'm really more about impartiality. I just happen to think that justice would agree with identity politik convention.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I think the confederate fanboys can still talk about how much they should have won even after we take away their participation trophies.

What has me worried is that many of these protesters don't want to deal with the process of making a positive, long lasting change, but they want to feel like they achieved something. So they tear down a statue and they feel good about themselves because it gave them an adrenaline rush, like they actually achieved something, but of course they didn't.

So what do they do when they run out of statues and monuments to pull down and they're right back where they started?

What do you propose then? What do you think they should be doing instead?

[CmdrKing]

What has me worried is that many of these protesters don't want to deal with the process of making a positive, long lasting change, but they want to feel like they achieved something. So they tear down a statue and they feel good about themselves because it gave them an adrenaline rush, like they actually achieved something, but of course they didn't.

So what do they do when they run out of statues and monuments to pull down and they're right back where they started?

Ah, but things are being achieved.
Remember: removing these symbols of oppression has been a goal of many for decades, and the wheels of government have dithered and hemmed and hawed and done nothing.
“If government will not enact the will of the people, the people will do for themselves” is both political AND practical, because it reestablishes the nature of the contract between the government and the people.

Further, one way in which peaceful protests can be effective is as contrast to this sort of direct action. Would MLK’s protests have worked without Malcom X or other revolutionary or even separatist movements existing to make the peaceful path the one of least resistance? We cannot truly know, but based on how quickly conservatives worked to undermine the civil rights act, it is an important consideration.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

This is like the whole national anthem thing, where nationally wrapped birthday present of police brutality is so graciously balanced by the blood and sweat of the military fighting nobly in the middle east.

Complaining about the speculated petulance of people as if they're going back in time and reversing history so that we can have trigger warnings on every syllabus. They're f'in statues get over it. It's practically the nile between erasing history and relocating a statue.

[phantom000]

What do you propose then? What do you think they should be doing instead?

Protesting in front of city hall and the police department and in the cities where these incidents actually accord rather then just any random city. Apply pressure to the people who actual can make things happen as oppose to just random people on the street who have no connection to the police, government, or even the incident in question.

Last month there was a riot in my home town and as I watching it on TV all i could think was 'what happened here? If you want to protest George Floyd's death, then you should do it in Minneapolis.' Or in Baltimore where protestors shut down a highway, for me it is hard to see how things like that have any connection to real progress.

Ah, but things are being achieved.
Remember: removing these symbols of oppression has been a goal of many for decades, and the wheels of government have dithered and hemmed and hawed and done nothing.
“If government will not enact the will of the people, the people will do for themselves” is both political AND practical, because it reestablishes the nature of the contract between the government and the people.

Further, one way in which peaceful protests can be effective is as contrast to this sort of direct action. Would MLK’s protests have worked without Malcom X or other revolutionary or even separatist movements existing to make the peaceful path the one of least resistance? We cannot truly know, but based on how quickly conservatives worked to undermine the civil rights act, it is an important consideration.

Shutting down the police department? That is someone's idea of progress? To me they seem to be blaming the entire department over something one individual did. Even cutting the funding would be bad because the sections that probably need it the most would be the first places they abandon.

Also, if government moves slow in one area it is usually because they have other issues to deal with, such as education, healthcare or defense.

“If government will not enact the will of the people, the people will do for themselves” You do understand this is the same mentality of a lynch-mob, right?

Lastly, MLK said he had a dream, but he also had a plan. He knew people involved in the political and legal process, he knew how government and the courts worked, he had close friends who had connections. He knew exactly where and how to apply the pressure for the best results and he had a clear goal outlined from the start, he knew exactly which laws he wanted changed and what measures he wanted implemented. And the same can be said of Gandhi, said to be the one who inspired King, he knew exactly what he wanted and how to achieve it.

Now granted, i am talking about King and Ghandi in hindsight, but I think this why Occupy Wall-Street ultimately achieved little or nothing at all; no one had a goal in mind and no one had any idea how to make anything happen. I could be wrong, or something could change in the near future, but suspect Black Lives Matter is headed down the same place, a lot of noise that achieves nothing and is ultimately forgotten.

This is like the whole national anthem thing, where nationally wrapped birthday present of police brutality is so graciously balanced by the blood and sweat of the military fighting nobly in the middle east.

That is kind of what i have been saying that if you are not willing to take both the good and the bad, then its not history anymore, its just a fantasy.

Complaining about the speculated petulance of people as if they're going back in time and reversing history so that we can have trigger warnings on every syllabus. They're f'in statues get over it. It's practically the nile between erasing history and relocating a statue.

There is a sort of paradox here. If they are just a statue that doesn't mean anything, then why do they want to tear it down so badly? If its a symbol of an oppressive system, then tearing it down would be the last thing, right?

So either way, isn't it just a waste of time?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

There is a sort of paradox here. If they are just a statue that doesn't mean anything, then why do they want to tear it down so badly? If its a symbol of an oppressive system, then tearing it down would be the last thing, right?

So either way, isn't it just a waste of time?

Just responding to this atm. I'll try not to be redundant with your post.

When we say it's a symbol of an oppressive system, it's not so much a tangible machine in a factory where people are tearing down the company sign in the front of the parking lot. It's a cultural emblem in a more fluid social landscape.

Like honestly we could start to play out a Rashomon scenario here, but I find the emblematic social hierarchy appropriated by the statue being on not only public but center grounds to be a pretty valid assessment of what the statues do manifest.

Now, most the objectionists to the broad movement are still appealing to historical conveyance what have you. But I for the life of me can not take that too seriously or at least sensitively. And It's true that tearing down the statues left/right is a thing of its own and it's kind of being enabled even if not really appropriated by the progressive "establishment". But I still see these statues as utterly superficial in terms of preserving history. That's not a double standard. That'd be like saying "why don't we have a justice system that conforms to evilness aside from the one that conforms to goodness?" I mean what's the difference in emblematic nature of having a statue of Hitler and one of REL?

[GreyICE]

I responded to most of these in the other thread, but in the interests of assuming good faith, I'll respond here.

Protesting in front of city hall and the police department and in the cities where these incidents actually accord rather then just any random city. Apply pressure to the people who actual can make things happen as oppose to just random people on the street who have no connection to the police, government, or even the incident in question.

Last month there was a riot in my home town and as I watching it on TV all i could think was 'what happened here? If you want to protest George Floyd's death, then you should do it in Minneapolis.' Or in Baltimore where protestors shut down a highway, for me it is hard to see how things like that have any connection to real progress.

Unfortunately police injustice is not isolated to one city. Your hometown is Baltimore? If you follow the news, you should be very well aware of what utter garbage the Baltimore PD is. The Baltimore PD:

Plants toy guns on dead victims of police shootings: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-gttf-officer-charged-20200115-m3gf7nfx5venzlmyxj7duqxbjm-story.html

It's department policy to plant toy guns actually:http://www.eraseracismny.org/component/content/article/21/587

Caught on camera fabricating evidence: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-pinheiro-ruling-20181109-story.html

A DIFFERENT cop caught on camera fabricating evidence: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/us/baltimore-cop-indicted-body-cam-footage/index.html

Racketeering charges for 7 officers: https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/us/baltimore-police-officers-racketeering-charges/index.html

Not to mention,
Freddie Gray: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32400497
Eric Sopp:https://www.wbaltv.com/article/eric-sopp-baltimore-county-police-bodycam-video-fatal-officer-involved-shooting-interstate-83/31141178

Of course Baltimore is dangerous. Poor officer Sean Suiter died, shot in the head in an abandoned lot. And only the day before he was scheduled to testify in a corruption case regarding corruption in the Baltimore PD too!

Oh nevermind, he committed suicide. My bad: https://www.wbaltv.com/article/maryland-state-police-sean-suiter-suicide/29714052

It's a very bizarre suicide. For instance, before he was shot you see him running into a vacant lot, pursued by his own partner. There, presumably he whipped out a gun and shot himself. Only the Baltimore PD had a two week manhunt for the killer, which presumably wouldn't have been all that necessary had his partner testified that he witnessed Suiter shoot himself. Yet they had the manhunt anyway. Almost like they didn't have access to the footage of him being chased into the vacant lot, and weren't officially told about it by his partner.

Yeah, you see why there might be protests, yes?

Shutting down the police department? That is someone's idea of progress? To me they seem to be blaming the entire department over something one individual did. Even cutting the funding would be bad because the sections that probably need it the most would be the first places they abandon.

If the extensive documentation of the Baltimore PD's actions above don't demonstrate that this is hardly an isolated incident, we can look at Minneapolis. Oh boy can we.

The head of the Police Union, Bob Kroll, is a white supremacist (or, as Darth Wedgius would tell you, "wears 'White Power' patches and belongs to a club full of white supremacists, and calls black people the n-word"). https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/minneapolis-police-union-president-kroll-george-floyd-racism/

There have been numerous protests against him, and he's been involved in fatal shootings and many use of force incidents. Multiple complaints have been filed against him. 75% of the Minneapolis PD voted for him to be union president (the force is 79% white).

The Minneapolis PD has been in the shit time and again for racism. And even with George Floyd, you can see that it wasn't "one man." Four people participated in that murder. Watch the video. It's disgusting.


This can only be considered as part of a whole. White supremacist infiltration of police departments is widespread, planned, and entirely predictable. As many have noted, with the police departments in the south being essentially wings of the KKK in the early 1900s, it's not so much "they infiltrated" as "they never left". Officers move around, and white supremacists have been very active at accessing PDs. Combined with militarization of the police, endless "tough on crime" rhetoric becoming "create your own criminals".

Further reading:

School to Prison Pipeline: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ870076.pdf
White supremacists in law enforcement (2016 article): https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement
2019 article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/13/how-us-law-enforcement-is-failing-to-police-itself
2019 paper: https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/28080-lcb231article2johnsonpdf
Links of cops planting evidence: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence
Interview (and link) to database of police misconduct: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/an-ex-cop-keeps-the-countrys-best-data-set-on-police-misconduct/

No national database of police misconduct is maintained
Confessions of a former bastard cop: https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I live in a city with a rather sparse black population. I've never seen anything regarding our police station having these kind of issues, we're mostly a college stoner town which will be a market for some drugs and you might get brushes with not quite local gangs every 5 years and some otherwise loony indoor farm people every now and then.

We're 60's/90's liberal mostly but we have some acute blm protests downtown. So what's important as far as we're concerned? The movement of blm is pretty nationally known and renowned on the left. Part of the message of white privilege and what not is a lot of people that aren't not being decently familiar with how prevalent racial issues are, as far as how they make the news and how people not really involved respond to them. When you a push for more comprehensive federal legislation in a country already structured on states rights and a disconnect there with local counties that are at the whim of municipalities and their internal governments that depend squarely on business taxes and state grants. There are layers to how reforms are done outside of special interest groups, but a lot of the effort goes towards giving attention to a problem for the most part consistent across distinct regions.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

What do you propose then? What do you think they should be doing instead?

Protesting in front of city hall and the police department and in the cities where these incidents actually accord rather then just any random city. Apply pressure to the people who actual can make things happen as oppose to just random people on the street who have no connection to the police, government, or even the incident in question.

Last month there was a riot in my home town and as I watching it on TV all i could think was 'what happened here? If you want to protest George Floyd's death, then you should do it in Minneapolis.' Or in Baltimore where protestors shut down a highway, for me it is hard to see how things like that have any connection to real progress.

Ah, but things are being achieved.
Remember: removing these symbols of oppression has been a goal of many for decades, and the wheels of government have dithered and hemmed and hawed and done nothing.
“If government will not enact the will of the people, the people will do for themselves” is both political AND practical, because it reestablishes the nature of the contract between the government and the people.

Further, one way in which peaceful protests can be effective is as contrast to this sort of direct action. Would MLK’s protests have worked without Malcom X or other revolutionary or even separatist movements existing to make the peaceful path the one of least resistance? We cannot truly know, but based on how quickly conservatives worked to undermine the civil rights act, it is an important consideration.

Shutting down the police department? That is someone's idea of progress? To me they seem to be blaming the entire department over something one individual did. Even cutting the funding would be bad because the sections that probably need it the most would be the first places they abandon.

Also, if government moves slow in one area it is usually because they have other issues to deal with, such as education, healthcare or defense.

“If government will not enact the will of the people, the people will do for themselves” You do understand this is the same mentality of a lynch-mob, right?

Lastly, MLK said he had a dream, but he also had a plan. He knew people involved in the political and legal process, he knew how government and the courts worked, he had close friends who had connections. He knew exactly where and how to apply the pressure for the best results and he had a clear goal outlined from the start, he knew exactly which laws he wanted changed and what measures he wanted implemented.

And for that, he became the most hated man in America, and then he was murdered.

Peaceful protest gets you fired from the NFL and blackballed. Peaceful protest gets you beating, sprayed with hoses, savaged by dogs, shot with rubber-coated bullets used with lethal intent, tear gassed, and everything else to boot.

So where is the incentive to play nice?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Shutting down the police department? That is someone's idea of progress? To me they seem to be blaming the entire department over something one individual did. Even cutting the funding would be bad because the sections that probably need it the most would be the first places they abandon.

It's not blaming everyone for the actions of a few. It's blaming for the one person who did the murder, the three who looked on and did nothing, and the entire rest of the police force that dragged their heels about arresting a murderer who had committed the murder in cold blood on camera in full public view and forming the blue wall to defend him.

And funding cuts would be bad? Have you seen a police budget? Every city's budget looks like that Dril candle tweet. The worst that would happen if you cut the budget to a third of what it was is they can't afford as many tanks and scifi weapons.